French postal service celebrates baguette with scratch-and-sniff stamp | EUROtoday

Issued on: 17/05/2024 – 20:27Modified: 17/05/2024 – 20:25

1 min

But it was unveiled Thursday, the day of Saint-Honore, the patron saint of bakers and pastry cooks, by the French postal service.

“The baguette, the bread of our daily lives, the symbol of our gastronomy, the jewel of our culture”, La Poste says on its web site.

The stamp, which prices 1.96 euro, depicts a baguette adorned with a blue-white-red ribbon. It has a print run of 594,000 copies.

According to the Parisian store Le Carre d’encre, which sells it, the stamp has a “bakery scent”. The ink used on the stamps comprises microcapsules which give the perfume.

“This scent is encapsulated. We buy it from another manufacturer,” Damien Lavaud, printer at Philaposte, was quoted as saying by France Bleu.

“And the difficulty for us is to apply this ink without breaking the capsules, so that the smell can then be released by the customer rubbing on the stamp.”

The new stamps went on sale on Friday.

The French baguette, one of many abiding symbols of the nation, was given UNESCO heritage standing in 2022.

(AFP)